Blog : Our Development Process | Part 1 - Planning
Opening the "Black Box" - our web development process explained
We understand that the process of designing and developing websites and online applications can seem very mysterious to those who don't do it for a living. In our
Approach section, we give a quick summary of what you can expect when you engage our services.
I thought I would take a moment here to provide a bit more detail about what you can expect when you work with us on a typical web development project.
In future updates we'll cover the next steps that come after this, but today we're going to focus on Step 1 – Planning & Requirements Analysis.
Our approach to each project is to combine our expertise with our clients’, working closely with them on all decision points, while also not burdening our clients with cumbersome tasks. At every step, Somnia works closely with the Client and does not move past key decision points without Client go-ahead.
Therefore, in the Planning & Requirements Analysis step, the Somnia project manager and the Client (that's you!) will work out all of the details of the project “on paper”. Similar to a blue print of a construction project, these documents
will outline what will be built before “construction” begins. For most projects, this will include
- A comprehensive audit and review of the current site, identifying what is working well, what is not working well, and what needs to be changed. This forms the basis of our initial discussions with your team moving forward.
- Functionality Document – identifying in detail every aspect of what the site or app will do for each of its users (for example: Administrators, members, external users)
- Information Architecture Plan – identifying the structure of the external site, includes the sitemap and content standards guide.
- Wireframe – indentifying the non creative visual design for the site, including layout, location of menus and relative size of all visual assets.
- Site roll-out plan – identifying the steps that the client would like for the new site’s launch to ensure maximum exposure and leverage with other communications efforts. From a technical perspective, our clients have have control over the exact
moment that their new site is made live. It is be possible to keep the old site up while the new site launches, or our clients may choose to replace the old site with a teaser banner or something else to generate anticipation. We are open to working with you on
this.
Each of these planning documents arel submitted to the client for review and sign-off before we consider them complete.
Stay tuned for a
description of Step 2 – Development.